Wheat

I've recently taken an interest in food storage. Not just building a supply of food, but learning to buy things that are less expensive and rotate them through my regular meal preparation. I like to have a "two week at a time" menu plan which I created in Excel and contains data for the last 2 years. It's helpful when trying to think of something to eat to be able to look back at what we ate 2 years ago in Septemeber for ideas.

I decided to come up with a few standard dinner items that I would use more frequently that wouldn't require all fresh ingredients and that my kids would eat. Tall order, right? I know. I came up with about 5 items and I'm trying to stock up on some of the items like broths, dry seasoning packets, pastas, etc. This is all fine and dandy but I've discovered that I can get things so much cheaper from the church cannery. Those items include flour, sugar, pasta, and wheat. WHEAT...the food I remember finding in my tuna sandwich at school and wondering how "rice" got into my sandwich. The stuff my mom used to run through the grinder each morning in the basement and then boil for her breakfast. WHEAT! I must have clearly forgotten or perhaps never fully understood my distaste for the "life sustaining" product because I've decided to try incorporating it into our meals.

I do not have a wheat grinder but Andrew is completely on board and has found one for me that has multiple grinding levels to provide me with cracked wheat, flour, and anything else I may need. Before I blow $150 on the shiney Kitchenaid attachment and fill my garage with bags of wheat, I thought I should perhaps buy some wheat from the grocery store and test it out in a few meals. I'm also planning to get some whole wheat flour to use in my next pizza dough and loaf of bread.

So here's where I need your help. I want to have a good wheat experience, I really do. I am reading recipes and cookbooks (actually the only one I have is from 1966 which tells me how lucky I am to be a woman in this day and age when I can use an electric mixer!), and I just haven't found the right recipe to base my new whole wheat lifestyle on. I am in need of some suggestions. There must be people out there, other than my mom who eat wheat. Send me your recipes. I need to try this out and see if I too can trick my kids into thinking it's rice. They love rice, so they should love wheat too, right?

As a side note, I read that 1 cup of wheat contains 400 calories. Yikes! I could eat 3 skinny cow ice cream sandwiches in place of that one cup of wheat. YUM!